Today was the last day of the 2015 fall banding season. It was a rather slow and uneventful morning with 16 new birds and 12 recaptures of 7 different species. My goal for this morning was to catch 10 Yellow-rumped Warblers which would make 600 for the season. It took all morning to get there but I finally caught him around 11:00am! Unfortunately, while I was double checking the data sheets this afternoon I ran across a White-eyed Vireo from earlier in the month that got passed over as a Yellow-rumped Warbler. So, that puts them back at 599. It was not a good year for Yellow-rumps. The average over the last three years since we started banding everyday (2012-2014) was 985 individuals per fall season. We were 385 individuals below that this year - a 40% decrease! Not sure what happened to them all this year. Maybe they overflew us and are enjoying Florida right now? Maybe the warm November has kept them further north and they haven't reached us yet? Maybe they had a bad breeding season and experience low recruitment? Whatever the reason, it will be interesting to see if they show up en masse in February like they always do.
I will hopefully have all the totals figured out tomorrow and will post a post-season summary either tomorrow or Wednesday.
Here is a pic of the last bird of the 2015 fall season. Not one that I would have expected to be the last bird as this is only the 4th one banded this season.
 |
| House Finch (Unknown age, Male) Hatch-year House Finches can have a complete preformative (1st prebasic) molt. As long as there is no molt limit present, we cannot confidentially age them. This individual showed no sign of an eccentric molt (which many will do) or any other obvious molt limits. It also had a completely ossified skull, so I had to assign it as "unknown" age. |
-Aaron
| Species | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New | Recaps | New | Recaps | |
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
|
2
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
Gray Catbird
|
1
|
5
|
-
|
-
|
Yellow-rumped Warbler
|
10
|
4
|
-
|
-
|
Eastern Towhee
|
-
|
1
|
-
|
-
|
Swamp Sparrow
|
2
|
1
|
-
|
-
|
Northern Cardinal
|
-
|
1
|
-
|
-
|
House Finch
|
1
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
| Banding Stats | Captain Sam's | Little Bear | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| # Birds Banded |
16
|
||
| # of Recaptures |
12
|
||
| # of Species |
7
|
||
| Effort (net-hours) |
150.0
|
||
| Capture Rate (birds/100 net-hours) |
18.7
|
||
| Nets |
25
|
Banding Staff
Aaron Given
